


Barbed Snake

by nickahontas



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Fem!Harry, Harry Has a Twin, One-Shot, Revenge, Suicide, Torture, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-07
Updated: 2019-12-07
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:55:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21699598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nickahontas/pseuds/nickahontas
Summary: Holly Potter seeks revenge for the boy she loved.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter, Draco Malfoy/OFC
Comments: 3
Kudos: 62





	Barbed Snake

She could have watched Snape and Bellatrix duel for hours. They were so dichotomous, so brutal. Bellatrix was a storm of madness, Snape the stone that weathers it. Still, it was Holly’s kill. And Harry’s too. And Neville’s. The list could go on and on, but those were the only two she gave a damn about and of the three of them, Holly was the only one capable of the cruelty Bellatrix deserved.

Bellatrix Lestrange had given her nephew a fate worse than death and so Holly would take a long time killing her.

She ensured Terry was doing well before sidling up to Snape. She joined her mentor with a synchronicity learned over years of tutoring. Their spells were silent, quick, and incarcerating. The curses they dodged and deflected ranged from inconvenient jinxes to deadly things that left craters in the floor. It was a bit like dueling Luna. Flighty minds were bad for distraction. It had been Luna’s strength and weakness

Holly cast a light so bright that it hurt her own eyes. Snape did not stagger like everyone else in the vicinity. He’d probably been waiting for it, pissed that she’d taken so long to think of it. There was a scream, a bang, and the world dimmed to reveal Bellatrix Lestrange hanging upside down by the ankle.

A feral, frightening sort of pleasure filled Holly. If she were to be honest with herself, she would say she was a bit turned on. It was the most she’d felt in a week.

Cracks echoed through the room, followed by a cacophony of stunning spells. Snape cast his own. Holly stared up at him.

“I am not the one who will argue against this,” he said, eyes dead as ever. “I will only suggest that you leave a witness.”

With that, he strode off to help incarcerate the prisoners. He reenervated all of them while Harry appeared at his sister’s side. Neville Longbottom was quick to follow.

“She’s mine,” he spat, round cheeks flushed.

“Maybe,” Holly conceded, staring down at the witch’s prone form. “But you can’t make her suffer like I can.”

“I’ll mean it! More than I mean anything!”

Holly laughed. “I’m going to do far worse than Crucio her Neville. She gets off on that. It would only bring her pleasure.”

“Neville, she’s right,” Harry said. He turned to his sister. “What do you need? We can do that, at least.”

“A pyre, I think. And clear the way for an audience. I want them to know.”

He nodded grimly and set off to transfigure bits of stray wood. Holly bent over Bellatrix. She studied her wild curls, her sharp cheeks, her aristocratic nose. Sometimes it was like looking into a dark mirror. A demented Erised of sorts.

She cast a curse Draco taught her, simply for the irony of it. Barbed wire slithered up Bellatrix’s arms and legs, blood trailing where it punctured the skin. Silently, Holly picked up the ebony wand and rennervated the witch with it. Bloodshot eyes flickered open, widened, filled with fury when the wand snapped in her face. Stuck by sudden inspiration, Holly summoned her strength and pushed. Bellatrix choked in pain. It was all she would allow herself. Holly could respect that.

Somewhere to their right, someone whimpered.

“It’s done,” Harry said quietly. Without a word, they both raised their wands and levitated her to the makeshift pyre. Harry, always better with charms, stuck her to it.

Bellatrix looked like a nightmarish Renaissance painting with the barbed wire puncturing her skin and half her wand sticking out of her eyeball. Holly couldn’t decide if Sirius would have liked it. Neville didn’t seem to mind. Draco would be smiling.

“The Dark Lord will avenge me, you filthy maggots!” The witch cackled.

“He’s going to hunt us down either way. Might as well have some fun with it.”

“I’ll not speak. I will never reveal His secrets!”

“Oh, I don’t want you to talk. I just want you to scream.” And in a whisper, Holly incanted, “Exsecratus Ignus.” 

A single skull danced out of her wand. Slowly, mesmerizingly, it shimmied across to the pyre. It circled the base once before touching Bellatrix’s feet. Holly flicked it again. A snake, this time. A dragon, next. Their faces contorted with the sensuality of their flickering flames, angry jeers morphing into bared teeth into serene sneers.

Bellatrix was mad and clever and undeniably strong. She was a powerful witch. In the end, though, she was only human. She started screaming when her calves bubbled. The scent of burnt skin filled the room by the time she began sobbing. Long, desperate cries that fueled the fiendfyre. The flames danced to her misery, winding their way further up and up.

Someone in the back wretched. Several left. Harry, Neville, and Snape were silent sentinels. They watched with blank expressions as they layers of flesh were burnt away, as the meat underneath was blackened to a crisp. White bits of bone gleamed in the flame.

Bellatrix died with her handsome features contorted into agony. Her body, up to her breasts, was nothing but a contorted mess of sinew and bone. Her long, beautiful curls had been fried to a soft halo.

Holly had imagined she would be over the moon. Maybe a little bloodthirsty. Maybe sad.

But she only felt peace, like she could go lie down in Lupin’s bed and sleep without her cursed dreams. It was more than she’d felt in a week. 

“Take her down,” Holly ordered calmly.

With the same almost bored nonchalance, she surveyed the prisoners kneeling behind her. There are nine in all, and only three death eaters. She wasn’t Dumbledore or Severus or Harry. She didn’t have endless reserves of power, and she’d just sustained perfect control of fiendfyre for Merlin knew how long. Still, she was going to do this right.

The first Avada made her weak in the knees. She braced herself, thought of Draco, of his chest rising and falling with those lovely, empty eyes, and a new torrent of emotion straightened her spine.

She cast something else, something worse. Blood poured from the deep cuts in his body.

She stopped in front of the last one. He pissed himself.

“I have a message for your Lord,” she said. She bent down to look deep into the man’s shifty eyes. “You have taken my future from me. You have taken the man I loved. I will do everything to make your pitiful existence hell for as long as I live. If we win, I will not stop at your death. I will piss on your grave. I will make it so the histories mock you for years to come. And until this war is over, I will not be cowed. I have all of your passion and none of your greed. The only thing I wish is for you to die even slower than your whore did tonight.”

With that, she nodded at Harry. Harry curled the man’s hand around one of Bellatrix’s ruined wrists. He stared at the man and simply said, “I won’t hold her back any longer.”

Harry placed a portkey in the man’s other hand. He disappeared in a whirl.

―――――

Lucius Malfoy looked at Warrington’s piss stained pants, at his sister in law’s ruined corpse, at the corpses piled around the Dark Lord’s feet.

It all had all gone to shit. He’d thought Draco would be safer if he were disowned. He’d hoped his son, his only child, would be survive this thrice damned war with Dumbledore at the helm.

He’d thought the Potter girl not worthy of his line. Of his only, beloved child.

They said she’d been the one to kill him. That when they’d investigated the alarm, her scream had made when the moon look away. They said she’d given herself all of three minutes before she pushed Sirius Black aside, raised her wand, and killed her lover herself.

And now she had done this.

Lucius Malfoy looked at Bella’s corpse and he felt something for the first time in a week, since he’d watched the Dementors swarm his little dragon.

Lucius grinned as he raised his wand to his temple.

“Avada Kedavra.”


End file.
